They Thirst

by Robert McCammon
616 pgs

They Thirst is the third vampire book I've read in the last month, which wasn't a coincidence. I had been saving all three to read around Halloween, because I figured, if any of them were terrible, I could rationalize wasting time reading them because they're the types of books that should be read at this time of year. Fortunately, Robert McCammon delivers, once again.

Andy Palatazin grew up in Hungary, where, as a boy, he learned first hand that vampires exist. His father, who had gone out with a group of men during a winter storm to hunt down a vampire who had been hunting in their village, returned in the middle of the night, having been "turned." Andy and his mother fled and eventually ended up in California, but he never forgot the terror and violence he witnessed that night. Now, decades later, Andy is a cop in L.A.. trying to protect its citizens from more mundane threats.

But a powerful vampire, Prince Vulkan, has decided to make L.A. his home as well, with plans to turn the whole city into an army of vampires before spreading to the rest of the country, and eventually, the world. It's Andy who is first to recognize the work of Prince Vulkan for what it is, and with the eventual help of a small group of people, sets out to find and stop him.

They Thirst is one of McCammon's earlier books (1981), and it reads like a book from that period. It's a little cheesy at times, but it shows the progression he was making as a writer and storyteller. I found myself both smiling as I read it and not wanting to put it down.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Cardinal Black

by Robert McCammon
462 pgs  (Matthew Corbett series #7)

Cardinal Black is the seventh book in Robert McCammon's fantastic series featuring Matthew Corbett. I've heard McCammon is only planning to have a couple more books in the series, which makes me both excited and disappointed at the same time. I can't wait to see how the story ultimately ends and how things end up for Corbett and the rest of the characters McCammon began introducing in Speaks the Nightbird. But at the same time, I don't want the story to end.

Events pick up in 1703, right where Freedom of the Mask left off. Matthew has found himself with no alternative but to assist the very man he's been trying to stop for months: Professor Fell. Fell has given Berry Grigsby, the girl Matthew has fallen in love with, an elixir that is causing her to rapidly deteriorate mentally to that of a child. She no longer recognizes Matthew, nor does she even know who she is anymore. Matthew has been forced to track down and retrieve a book of chemical potions, which was stolen from Fell, in order to find a possible cure for Berry.

He is joined on his search for the book by Julian Devane, one of Fell's assassins, and it doesn't take long for both of them to find themselves involved in a deadly game in London's underworld that will test both of their skill sets to their limits.

Each of the books in the series has been great, but Cardinal Black is one of my favorites so far. I found myself picking the book up every chance I could get, even if I only had a few minutes to read, and that's not something a book gets me to do very often. Once again, McCammon brings one installment of his overall story to a satisfying conclusion, only to jarringly set the stage for the next one. But that's a big reason why I enjoy his books so much.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

The Listener

by Robert McCammon
332 pgs

Robert McCammon's latest book The Listener takes place in New Orleans in 1934. John "Pearly" Partner and Ginger LaFrance are both lifetime con artists who, separately, have been running their own cons for many years. They arrive in a town or city, scam a modest amount of money out of as many locals as they can, and then move on to the next place on the map. When they both end up in New Orleans at the same time and recognize each other for what they are, they decide to work together on a scheme far more dangerous than anything either of them has done before, with the potential for a huge payoff.

Taking inspiration from the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's baby boy a couple years earlier, they decide to kidnap the two children of one of the wealthiest business men in the city and ransom them for $100,000 each.

Curtis Mayhew is a young black man who works as a red cap baggage handler at the New Orleans train station. Curtis has a special gift that only his widowed mother knows he possesses: he can communicate with others who share his same gift in his mind. When he "listens" he can connect with someone who is broadcasting his or her thoughts to him and they can carry on a conversation telepathically.

For the past little while he has been periodically communicating with a young girl who has recently discovered her own gift and is trying to understand it. He doesn't know who she is or where she lives until one day when she reaches out to him panicked and tells him she and her brother were just kidnapped.

What unfolds is a fantastic genre-bending story told by an author in the prime of his career. Every time I've reviewed one of McCammon's books, I'm sure I've said he's one of my favorite authors writing today, and The Listener is a great example of why. His stories are captivating, his characters are well written (Curtis is one of his best), and while I'm never happy to get to the end of one of his books, I'm always happy about the way it ends.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Swan Song

by Robert McCammon
798 pgs

About seven years ago I read my first book by Robert McCammon: Speaks the Nightbird, and his Matthew Corbett series instantly became a favorite of mine. I subsequently began reading his back catalog and have yet to be disappointed. Even his first few books, which McCammon has said himself are not that great and were the ones he wrote while he was learning how to write, I found were worth the time to read.

Swan Song is one of his earlier books that I was looking forward to the most, but that took me the longest to get around to reading. My wife read it when she was in high school, and knowing that King’s The Stand is my all-time favorite book, would periodically ask me when I was going to read it. But it’s not an easy book to get your hands on in hardcover, so it wasn’t until Subterranean Press got around to issuing it that I finally got my chance.

It’s a fantastic book and was well worth the wait.

At the beginning of the book nuclear war breaks out between the USA and the USSR. When the Soviet bombs land across the country, millions are killed from the initial blasts and the subsequent fallout. Among the survivors are a Sister Creep, a homeless woman in New York City, Josh Hutchins, a giant of a man who used to play in the NFL and most recently toured the country as a professional wrestler, and a nine-year old girl named Swan.

As the story progresses, their paths cross and the three find themselves traveling across the country, being guided by a jewel encrusted ring of glass. Sister found the ring in the ruble of a jewelry store shortly after the bombs fell and it led her to Josh and Swan. But something else knows about the ring and is searching for it, an entity able to take human form that senses the power of the ring feels compelled to destroy it.

Swan Song drew me in immediately. It’s nearly 800 pages long, and while sometimes a book that long would be significantly improved if it were only half as long, that’s not the case with this one. McCammon masterfully paces his story, beginning it with the conflict between two countries, each with the ability to destroy the world, and ending it with the ultimate conflict between good and evil. One side trying to ensure the planet’s opportunity to start over, and the other determined to destroy it completely.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Blue World

by Robert McCammon
425 pgs

Blue World by Robert McCammon is a collection of mostly short stories, with the exception of a couple of considerably longer story, including the one which shares the same title as the book itself.

It includes a story about a thief, who steals an old makeup case used in old Hollywood horror stories, and who quickly discovers the makeup has the power to transform the wearer. There’s a story about a man who wakes up one morning and finds the skeleton of his wife lying next to him. There’s a great story of a small town with a unique ritual which takes place every Halloween night. And another of an old man who used to play the role of a super hero in the old serial movies, who decides to dust off his old costume in order to hunt down a serial killer. In the final story in the collection, McCammon tips his hat to Ray Bradbury with a futuristic story dystopian story of a woman who finds comfort through Bradbury’s short stories.

Most of the stories were written back in the ‘80s and first published as a collection back then. The Subterranean Press edition, which came out in 2015, includes three newer stories and are new to the book itself. The evolution of McCammon’s writing style and ability is evident when you compare those last three stories to the rest. The older ones are pretty typical of the genre back then. They’re a little unsettling or they make you feel uneasy, while the newer evoke deeper emotions. They’ve got elements of the supernatural, but they deal with the sense of loss and the emotions which accompany it. I enjoyed them all, but felt like those last three are much more indicative of the type of writer McCammon has become.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Freedom of the Mask

by Robert McCammon
530 pgs  (Matthew Corbett series #6)

Speaks the Nightbird, the first book in Robert McCammon's Matthew Corbett series, is a massive book. It's over 700 pages long, and it's excellent. I've remained a big fan of the series ever since reading it several years ago, but I've worried as I've noticed each successive installment get shorter and shorter. The last book is only 257 pages, a trend I was happy to see reversed with this latest one. Freedom of the Mask is over 500 pages long, and each one is fantastic.

The last time Matthew Corbett's associate Hudson Greathouse saw him, was when he left New York for Charles Town, on what should have been a simple mission for the Herrald Agency. It's now been months since anyone has heard from Matthew, so Greathouse concludes something must have happened to him and he begins retracing Matthew's steps in an effort to find him.

Matthew has been taken against his will to London, where he now stands accused of murdering the man who kidnapped him. He's placed into the infamous Newgate Prison, where men quickly lose their minds due to the conditions there. Matthew must somehow find a way out of Newgate and get back to New York and the woman he loves. As an aside, I enjoyed the fact that McCammon inserted the famous author Daniel Defoe into his story and has Matthew interact with him while in Newgate, where Defoe actually spent time in 1703.

I can't recommend the series enough. It's set in the early 18th century, where Matthew works as a "problem solver" for the Herrald Agency in colonial America. His sharp mind and tenacity have pitted him against the enigmatic and ruthless Professor Fell throughout the series, a figure who I can best describe as an 18th-century version of a James Bond villain.

Like the rest of the books in the series, Freedom of the Mask has a captivating plot and a host of fascinating characters. It's proof that the series as a whole is progressing at full speed and that McCammon is on top of his game. I finished it anxious and impatient for the next book to come out.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

The Border

by Robert McCammon
441 pgs

The Border represents a return by Robert McCammon to the type of books that first made him famous as a writer. As good as his most recent books featuring Matthew Corbett are, most of his earlier writing was dark, scary, and epic in scale.

The book begins two years after most of the world has been destroyed by two different alien races. The Gorgons and Cyphers--as they've become known by the survivors--have been involved in an intergalactic war for ages. Two years ago the frontline of that war moved to earth, and with far inferior technology and weapons, the collective armies of the world were decimated in a matter of hours. As the war raged on, the planet and its inhabitants continued to be poisoned and destroyed, with those able to survive living in hiding and slowly running out of resources.

A small group of survivors in Colorado has almost reached the end of their food and water supplies when they find a teenage boy calling himself Ethan. He's amnesiac and whatever caused his loss of memory has also left him with significant physical injuries. As they take him in and try to discover who he is and where he came from, Ethan begins to exhibit inexplicable powers, and strange symbols begin to appear on his bruised and battered body.

As Ethan continues to transform into something no one can explain, he and those with him begin to realize that he may be the planet's last and only hope for survival, and maybe even the end of the war they never wanted any part of.

I thoroughly enjoyed the story McCammon tells in The Border. The alien races he creates would be right at home in one of his earlier horror novels, and the human characters he creates are easy to care about. It's a good example of a writer who has had decades to sharpen his craft and knows what it takes to tell a story that grabs you, scares you, and entertains you all at the same time.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Night Boat

by Robert McCammon
243 pgs

First published 35 years ago, The Night Boat is the second book Robert McCammon wrote, and it's one of the books that he himself admits wasn't that good. He's said that he learned how to write by writing books, and since all of the books he's written have been published, everyone who reads his earlier books gets to experience his learning curve. That being said, I enjoyed The Night Boat. It's nowhere near as good as The Five, Boy's Life, or any of the Matthew Corbett books, but still, how could I not enjoy a book about a German U-Boat from World War II filled with zombies?

David Moore lives on an island in the Caribbean called Coquina. One day, while out for a dive, he unwittingly detonates an explosive device that causes an old sunken U-Boat from WWII to dislodge from the bottom of the ocean and surface. David and the local authorities on the island quickly realize that the submarine is in far better shape than it should be after having been submerged for decades.

In true horror-story fashion, someone decides they want to unseal the boat in hopes of finding something of value inside and instead release dozens of Nazi zombies seeking revenge on those who sunk their boat so many years ago.

This is not the Robert McCammon book that I would recommend to people who aren't already fans of his books. If it's the first book by him that you read, you're likely to dismiss him and never read anything else by him. But, if you've already gained an appreciation for the author that he eventually became, I have no reservations about recommending The Night Boat. It's an old-school horror story that you'll likely enjoy.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The River of Souls

by Robert McCammon
257 pgs  (Matthew Corbett series #5)

The River of Souls is book number five in McCammon's ongoing series that he says will ultimately include ten books. The series features Matthew Corbett who is a "problem solver" in colonial America at the turn of the 17th century and it's one of my favorite series currently being written.

This time around Matthew finds himself back in Charles Town on an unusual assignment from the Hudson Agency. The assignment is only a precursor though to a much more dangerous adventure Matthew finds himself involved in, when the young daughter of a wealthy plantation owner is discovered murdered by a slave who then flees up river in an apparent attempt to avoid hanging. After examining the body, Matthew doubts that it was in fact the slave who committed the murder and decides to join the group following the escaped slave into the ominous swampland up river, hoping to convince the group to return with him alive so that Matthew can prove his innocence and discover the identity of the true murderer.

It doesn't take long for Matthew and the entire group to realize that the swampland they're entering is filled with its own perils and that they're own survival is in jeopardy.

Every one of the books in this series has been great. This one is no exception. But it's by far the shortest of any of them and so I feel a lingering resentment towards McCammon because of it. If it was up to me, each of the books would be as long as Speaks the Nightbird, the first in the series was and I'd be able to enjoy them for a couple of weeks instead of just a couple of days. But regardless, I highly recommend the series and look forward to the next one.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Baal

by Robert McCammon
296 pgs

In the Old Testament the Prophet Elijah demonstrated the impotence of the god Baal by having the priests of Baal build an altar of wood to their god and call on him to ignite it himself. When nothing happened, Elijah built an altar to the true God, dowsed it repeatedly with water and then called on the Lord to do what Baal had been unable to accomplish. In Baal, Robert McCammon creates a character that is anything but powerless, and he places him in the modern world.

Baal begins with a woman leaving her job as a waitress at a diner to walk to the bus stop. Before she gets there she's attacked by a man who rapes her. That "man" leave her with first- and second-degree hand prints burned into her skin anywhere he touched her. He also leaves her expecting a child. The child, who she tricks her husband into believing is his, is born nine months later and is unlike any other child ever born. He's disturbingly quiet and eerily aware of the world around him. They name him Jeffrey, but he will eventually go by his true name of Baal.

Baal ends up at a Catholic orphanage where he grows into his full powers, destroying all who oppose him and selecting his first followers from the other children there. From there he begins his ultimate quest of revenge and power.

Written in 1978, Baal was both McCammon's first book written and published. McCammon himself has acknowledged that it and his other earlier books are not his finest work and that they represent an author learning how to write. I'd agree with his self-assessment. Baal is nowhere near the same level  the books he's writing today are at. His Matthew Corbett series and books like The Five and Boy's Life are fantastic. But I'll still be going back to read all of his earlier books. I'll just be doing so with different expectations. It'll be interesting to see how he's progressed as a writer.

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

I Travel by Night

by Robert McCammon
147 pgs

It's only been a month or so since I read The Providence Rider and I usually don't read another book by the same author this quickly, but I had been waiting for it to come in the mail for months, and it was so short that I made an exception to my self-imposed rule. Rebellious of me, I know.

I Travel by Night is only a novella, but it's a return for McCammon to the genre that he first made a name for himself in.

Trevor Lawson, a confederate soldier, was turned into a vampire one night after having been injured and left to die on the battlefield in Shiloh. But unlike the others of his kind, who embrace the dark gift when they receive it, Lawson never has, and doesn't intend to. He's been holding on to as much of his humanity as he's been able to for more than twenty years now as he's been searching for the vampire who turned him. He believes that if he's able to find her, and drain her of her vampiric blood, that he might be able to return to his life as a human.

I Travel by Night is a great story but it's too short. Lawson is an intriguing character and one with a lot of potential for additional tales down the road. Hopefully that's McCammon's intention and he's only teasing with this all-too-short introduction to him and the journey he's on.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The Providence Rider

by Robert McCammon
416 pgs  (Matthew Corbett series #4)

The Providence Rider is the fourth book in McCammon's series featuring Matthew Corbett, a self-described "problem solver" living in New York at the start of the 18th century. In the last two, The Queen of Bedlam and Mister Slaughter, McCammon gave us brief glimpses of the mysterious crime lord Professor Fell and his far-reaching empire of criminals. In this book McCammon reveals the man behind the curtain completely.

At the end of Mister Slaughter someone slipped one of Fell's trademark death cards under Matthew's door, signifying that his time left on earth was near its end and that Fell would soon be coming for him. As The Providence Rider begins buildings are being blown up throughout the city and Matthew's name is being painted on the building right next to it. It's Fell's unique way of coercing Matthew to his island in the Bermudas where he has a proposition for the young detective. Fell believes that there is a traitor in his organization and he's willing to cancel Matthew's death card if he will put his deductive mind to use for the Professor.

McCammon excels at creating fascinating characters, and in The Providence Rider he doesn't disappoint, introducing us to a whole host of colorful characters who work for Professor Fell, each of whom would fit in well in a Dickens novel. He also excels at his storytelling, and once again, he doesn't disappoint here either. The Providence Rider and each of the books in the series are fantastic. I attended a book signing with the author a year or so ago and he revealed that he anticipates writing a total of ten books featuring Matthew Corbett. I was very happy to hear that and am looking forward to the next one, The River of Souls sometime next year.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Boy's Life

Boy's Life by Robert McCammon

If there's only one book by Robert McCammon that people have read, it's more than likely Boy's Life. It won the Bram Stoker Award in 1991 and in 1992 it won the World Fantasy Award for best novel. I've decided to label it as a fantasy book because of that distinction, but the fantasy aspects in the book are very subtle and secondary to the story.

I'll admit that I'm a late-comer to the McCammon party - the Matthew Corbett series being the books that introduced me to him, so I haven't read much of his early stuff. More often than not though, when I'd mention him to people, they'd bring up how much they enjoyed Boy's Life. So I had high expectations when I started this one. It didn't disappoint.

I decided to finally get around to reading it when I learned that he would be visiting Salt Lake for this year's Bram Stoker Awards ceremony. I attended an author panel/signing that he participated in one of the nights he was here and he mentioned the fact that Ray Bradbury was a big inspiration to him as a writer. His inspiration is very evident in Boy's Life. It reminded me a lot of two of my favorite Bradbury books: Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes. All three books resonated deeply with me. They each captured the essence of what it's like to be a young boy - the anguish of sitting through the final minutes of the last day of the school year, the camaraderie that exists with the other boys you hang out with, and the joys that come from that relatively carefree time.

Boy's Life takes place in rural Alabama in 1964, and begins with the witnessing of a murder. While riding along on his father's milk delivery route early one morning, Cory Mackenson and his dad are nearly run off the road when a car crosses in front of them and proceeds into Saxon's Lake. As the car begins to sink, Cory's father dives in to see if he can rescue the driver. When he gets to the car, his father discovers the corpse of a man - severely beaten, strangled with a piano wire, and handcuffed to the steering wheel. His father has time to recognize that the man isn't a resident of their small town and notices a distinctive tattoo on the man's arm before the car sinks in the rumored bottomless lake. While watching all this, Cory sees the outline of someone else at the scene and when he goes to investigate who it was, he discovers a bright green feather at the spot the person had been standing. That feather and tattoo are the first clues in a mystery that consumes both Cory and his father.

I really can't recommend this book enough. It's fantastically written. The story is excellent and should be enjoyed by anyone who reads it. Although the mystery behind the identities of the victim and his killer carries throughout the book's entirety, it's really secondary to the true appeal of the story - the experiences of a twelve-year-old boy that shape the man he will eventually become.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Five

The Five by Robert McCammon

In his latest book, The Five, Robert McCammon incorporates his obvious love for music into a supernatural thriller that showcases his tremendous talent as a writer. The Five is the name of a relatively obscure rock band living a not-so-glamorous lifestyle on the road. They haul all of their equipment, t-shirts, and CDs with them from show to show hoping to sell enough tickets and merchandise to pay for a good meal and a decent hotel room each night. But for The Five, money isn't what's important. They're a group of similarly-minded people who have formed a family around their love of music.

The world that they understand is about to come crashing down on itself for the members of The Five though when a former Marine Corp sniper, Jeremy Pett, recently home from Afghanistan, and losing his battle with internal demons, sees the band's latest video on TV. The song is anti-war and the video portrays a U.S. soldier having to make a very difficult decision while in battle and making a terrible mistake. That video sets Pett on a mission to eliminate The Five.

The Five is an excellent book! It's got all of the elements that I hope for when I read a book. The story is compelling, the characters are multi-dimensional, and as a bonus with this one, it revolves around a subject that I have a lot of fond feelings for - rock music. It's a very, very, good book but I should warn that there are a few pages that are hard to read. Not that the words are hard to pronounce, but that they're gritty and graphic. The scene is essential to the story, so it needs to be there, but still, I felt like the warning was necessary.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Wolf's Hour

The Wolf's Hour by Robert McCammon

Vampires have received a lot of attention in popular media over the last few years. Zombies aren't doing too bad for themselves either. Werewolves, on the other hand, haven't been getting nearly as much time in the limelight.With The Wolf's Hour, Robert McCammon gives them some much deserved attention.

Michael Gallitin is particularly well suited for his work for the British government as a spy during World War II. He's a lycanthrop, a man who has the ability to transform into a wolf. When he was a young boy he was bitten by another lycanthrop and he survived the transformation process his body was subjected to. Now his unique set of skills is put to good use for the Allied forces as they prepare for D-Day.

This was a great book. Many people might dismiss it as simply a horror book about werewolves, but it's much more than that. McCammon has done a great job of taking the idea of a werewolf and building on it. These  lycanthrops are not beholden to the cycles of the moon. They are able to change into a wolf at will and do so completely as opposed to the versions seen in movies. The best features of McCammon's creations are the human-like cognitive abilities that are maintained when they're wolves, as well as the wolf-like instincts and sensory abilities maintained when they're human.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Mister Slaughter

Mister Slaughter by Robert McCammon
440 pgs  (Matthew Corbett series #3)

This is the third book in the Matthew Corbett series, a series I'm very excited about, since in my opinion, each book has been better than its predecessor. The series takes place in colonial America, seventy years before it declares independence from England. Corbett, who is still in training as an employee for the London-based Herald Agency, finds himself tasked with the job of transporting Tyranthus Slaughter, a murderer being housed at an asylum near Philadelphia, to the docks in New York. Slaughter, who brings to mind Hannibal Lecter, makes Corbett and his colleague an offer they can't refuse.

McCammon is an excellent storyteller. His characters in this series are multi-dimensional and intriguing and the plot is engrossing, suspenseful, and full of unexpected twists. He does a great job of creating the look and feel of the early 18th century in America while incorporating real and unique individuals from our country's history.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆